Red Light (3 page)

Merci nodded at this
summation, again wondering her way into Alexander Coates. Years ago, a wise old
mentor had told her that putting herself in another's shoes would make her a
better detective and a better person. She had absolutely no knack for it, and
she didn't believe him then. She'd never seen a reason to try to understand
people she didn't like in the first place, which was almost everyone. But the
old guy, Hess, had been right: In the two years, three months and twenty-two
days he'd been dead, Merci had worked hard at this, and she'd learned a few
things she might not have learned otherwise.

Such
as, if you spent eighteen years in the same apartment, listening to your
neighbors and their lovers come and go, you got good at it.

"Mr.
Coates, those two arrivals you heard upstairs, they were the footsteps of men,
correct?"

"Yes."
A confessional glance and nod.

"The
same man, or two different ones?"

"Oh,
different men, certainly. I was going to tell you that if you didn't ask."

"How
sure are you of that?"

"Well,
if you hear two voices, you know there are two people. Same with
footsteps."

"What
else about them, by the sound of them?"

Zamorra
aimed a look her way but said nothing.

Coates
settled his bottom into his chair, readying himself for his presentation.
Eighteen years of anecdotal data, Merci thought, about to find its way into a
thesis.

"The
first? Heavy, but not overweight. Not in a hurry. He was light on his feet, but
you can't fool the boards. Pounds are pounds. Young and probably athletic. And
familiar. Familiar with the area. He was wearing hard-soled shoes or boots. Not
cowboy boots, they have an entirely different sound. I pictured a young
businessman coming home from work, happy to be home, eager to see his wife or
his lover. When he left he
was ...
reluctant. He wished he wasn't leaving, but he had to."

Zamorra
was staring at the floor, his pen in his hand.

Coates
looked at Zamorra with concern, made an internal decision, turned his
attention back to Merci.

"The
second? A much lighter man. He was young also, light on his feet, quick. Soft
shoes. In somewhat of a hurry. I couldn't tell if he was familiar with the area
or not. He left much more slowly than he came. He sounded .. . unsteady.
Uncertain. I think I remember him pausing, about halfway down. I may have
imagined that. I can't swear to it. I pictured him as a young man eager to see
someone. Eager to get there, get what he wanted, then eager to leave. You know,
an impatient young buck on his way to the next thing. When he paused, I saw
him realizing he'd forgotten something. But he didn't go back."

Coates
sighed and looked into the fire.

Zamorra
abruptly shut off his tape recorder, cast his black eyes on Merci, then the
man. "How much pot did you smoke in the bathtub?"

Merci
had smelled it very faintly, too, when she had first sat down. It hadn't seemed
relevant, yet.

Coates's
face took on an expression of blank defiance. "One half of one
joint."

"Strong
stuff or cheap stuff?" Zamorra asked.

"Very
strong."

"There're
other people to talk to," said Zamorra. He stood and walked out.

Merci
finished her notes. The door slammed.

"That man is
unbelievably angry," said Coates.
464

"Believe it. Thank you."

Back
on the upstairs walkway, Merci stood aside for the coroner's people to wheel
Aubrey Whittaker past. She thought that Aubrey Whittaker would most likely have
been wheeling around in her red Cadillac if she hadn't answered the door for
the wrong guy. She looked out to the sparse 2
a.m
.
traffic on Coast Highway. Zamorra was already interviewing another neighbor.

Inside
she was greeted by the green eyes and wide smile of Evan O'Brien. The CSI held
up a small paper bag. Merci took it and looked in at a cartridge casing that
had rolled into the bag's corner.

"The
forty-five caliber Colt," said O'Brien. "Load of choice for many in
law enforcement."

Merci
Rayborn looked at the CSI with a hostility that could overtake her in a
heartbeat. Jokes about her profession were never funny.

"Hey,
Sergeant, don't rain on me for some of the best physical evidence you can ask
for. Lynda found it."

"Raped?"

"Apparently
not. And no signs of forced entry. Looks like some kind of scuffle or something
in the kitchen."

"How
many shots?"

"Probably just one.
There's a hole up in the corner of the slider. Your bullet is out there in the
ocean somewhere."

"Find it."

"Yes, Sergeant."

M
erci met
Mike for breakfast at seven in the courthouse cafeteria.

She'd had three hours
of sleep and now seemed to have feathers between her brain and her thoughts.
Tim, Jr., had awakened when she went into his room. She had held him until he
fell back asleep. He was just a year and a half old now, her little man, her
reason for everything.

Starved as usual in
the mornings, she got the big-eater's plate. Mike set down his tray of yogurt,
fruit and coffee with envy. He had a file under one arm, and he handed it to
Merci.

"Copy of
Whittaker's jacket," he said. "Thought I'd save you some time."

She scanned the top
sheet: one drunk driving conviction two years prior; one arrest for pot,
pleaded down to a misdemeanor for her attending a drug diversion program; one
pending charge of solicitation for prostitution—to be dropped for her
cooperation in a vice-squad investigation of outcall sex-for-hire.

"We'd finally
talked Aubrey Whittaker into helping us go after the outcall service," he
said unhappily.

Mike had a pleasant
face and a serious disposition. It seemed to have gotten more serious during
the last few months. But he'd been there for her, off and on, for over a year
now. She liked him and trusted him, and he let her keep a little distance
between them, a little padding. Marriage: no, not now. Cohabitation: no.
Innermost feelings and secret confessions: not yet. The future: later. The
insulation seemed to be part character. Mike understood this, even if she
didn't at times.

"That
was just two days ago," said Mike.

"Which
outcall?"

"The
Epicure."

"Is
that the Italian prince?"

"He's
a YACS thug."

YACS was a new term
in law enforcement, a new threat to the innocent. It stood for
Yugoslavian-Albanian-Croatian-Serbian, who---in spite of littering the aisles
of history with each others' dead---were lumped together for ethnic reasons.
They'd mostly stayed East Coast, but Southern California was getting its share.

"I thought the
YACS were supermarket robbers, truck hijackers,” said Merci.

"Well,
this one peddles flesh and calls himself an Italian prince.

Mike peeled his
banana without desire, bit into it. She thought this was emblematic of him: His
whole life was a should instead of a want. That was part of what made him Mike,
what made him good. Sometimes, actually noble. Two hundred and twenty pounds of
muscle, a boy's smile and blue eyes clear as a desert sky, for whatever that
was worth. Worth quite a lot, sometimes. Other times she thought it was vanity.

"Priors?"

"Stateside he's
got pimping, pandering and some assaults. Woman, of course. Back in YACSville,
who knows?"

"I
hope you get him."

Mike shook his head
slowly. "She . . . Aubrey Whittaker, tried stand up for the guy at first.
Said if we wanted a bust just bust her. Wouldn't admit that he was taking
almost the whole outcall fee, which he was. Wouldn't admit she was encouraged
to keep her 'clients' satisfied, whatever that took. Wouldn't admit that she
was working for tips, which she was. He's a pig, selling nineteen-year-olds to
rich old and high-tech nerds with million-dollar companies and no morals. You
do that to a girl, you're stealing her soul. I'll get him. And you'll nail the
shit who killed her."

Mike wore a silver
cross around his neck. Merci could see the chain behind the open collar of his
blue dress shirt, a glint within a shadow. He'd started wearing it a few months
back, when he joined the church. Merci had only gone twice: She would not
attend any church where worshipers were forced to stand and greet their
neighbors.

"Good luck on
the next-of-kin search," said Mike. "She went to court to change her
name, wouldn't tell me what the real one was."

"Where'd
she grow up?"

"Wouldn't come
clean with me. Oregon, Seattle, Texas or Ohio, depending on who she was talking
to, Iowa is what she told me."

"And
on to California, to start over."

"I
think it's sad. What do you have?"

She ran down what she
knew. She and Zamorra would do a walkthrough later today, as the early lab
work was done. That was when they could really put things together. But for
now—one shooter who might have used a silenced weapon; possibly someone Aubrey
had known well enough to open her door to; no rape or robbery. Motive—none as
yet. Witnesses—one who heard noises. Suspects—none. Unless you wanted to
include the johns in her black book, of which there were many.

Mike listened, his
eyes moving left and right. When something was bothering him his eyes got
restless and wouldn't land.

"It doesn't make
sense," he said. "A wad of money in her purse, no rape, nothing
taken? Why kill her? To hear what a silenced automatic sounds like?"

"I
can't add it up either, Mike."

"She
was ...
well, nineteen."

"I think she
knew him. Lynda said the place was crawling with prints, like any domicile.
It's just a matter of running some of them through CAL-ID and AFIS, see what
pops."

"Is
the black book coded?"

She shook her head.
"Half-assed, maybe. Plenty of initials and names to go on."

"Some of them
get elaborate on their codes. It's more to do with denying the john's individuality
than for security."

"Not
her, from the looks of it."

"Then
you might have the key. That and the brass, if you get a suspect and a
gun."

Mike
opened the yogurt, looked at the inside of the foil lid. He had long blond
eyelashes and when he relaxed and stared at something he looked innocent and
bewildered. Sometimes she wanted to hold him close, like she held Tim, Jr.
There was something gentle in Mike---she saw it most often when he worked his
dogs. Mike ran the bloodhounds for the department. He had told her straight out
that he was a dog person, not a people one. He'd been trying hard to change
that, for reasons that didn't seem entirely his own.

"Merci, I'd like
to ask Brighton to let me work the murder with

Brighton
was the sheriff; and working the case with her was out of the question.

"No," she
said.

"But
we've got a big overlap with the outcall op we're running, I can help. Believe
me."

"Then
help, Mike, but I don't want anyone assigned to this except me. It's mine and
Paul's."

"Hell's
bells, Merci, you could think about it for more than two seconds."

"Why? I don't
have to."

Through
her fatigue and growing anger, Merci saw Mike's face with his disappointment.
He looked like Tim, Jr., when he first understood the bottle was empty: crushed
in a new way, time after time.

"Mike,
look. I'll share what I have with you. I'll keep you in the loop. But I don't
need a vice sergeant in the brew right now. I've got all the help I need."

" 'A vice
sergeant in the brew.' "

"Right."

"Is that like a
fly in the ointment?"

"No, Mike. It is
not."

"Are we still on
for the movies tonight?"

"I'm already
worn out. Rain check?"

"It isn't
raining."

He
stood and lifted his tray all in one motion. She watched dump the food into the
trash can, rack the tray and walk out.

Melvin Glandis,
assistant sheriff, stood over her desk with a stack of tattered files under
one arm. He was a big triangle of a man, wide shoulders, narrow hips, short
legs, small feet. He was rumored to be an accomplished ballroom dancer. His
face was pink and good-humored. It was eight that morning.

"Here's
your Christmas present. Solve it by New Year's Eve, you get a smoked ham."

"Leave the file.
Keep the ham."

Glandis
dropped it to the desktop. "Patti Bailey, shot and dumped, nineteen
sixty-nine. Add it to your dead hooker list. Maybe you'll have better luck with
it than we did."